Part 11 (1/2)

All this I said with much lofty arrogance, and a great a.s.sumption of knowing all, and of being a competent adviser of a friend in trouble, but, at heart, I knew that, in Harlson's place, I should not have shown any particular degree of self-control. I have never felt the thing, but it must be grinding to occupy a position like that of this man I was addressing. The serving out of a society sentence must be a test of grit.

We dropped the discussion of the problem, and Harlson referred to it again but incidentally.

”The fact is,” said he, ”I had almost forgotten that I was not as free as other men. I have not regulated my course by my real condition.

I've drifted, and there have been happenings, as you know well.

There's Mrs. Gorse. I've never concealed anything. Those who know me at all well know my relations.h.i.+ps, but I imagine that I have been deceiving myself. I am not a free agent--though I will be. It's not right as it is.”

”And when am I to see this woman who has interested you, and restored the old colors to the rainbow? You will allow me to admire her, I suppose, if only from a distance?”

”Oh, yes! Come with me to the Laffins' to-morrow night. She'll be there, I learned, and I said I was going to be there too. Come with me. Of course, you understand that if she smiles on you at all, or if you appear to have produced a favorable impression upon her, I shall a.s.sa.s.sinate you on our way home.”

I told him that I thought my general appearance and style of conversation would preserve me from the danger, and that I would take the risk and accompany him.

The next night I met Jean Cornish. We were destined to become very well acquainted.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE WOMAN.

Only a little brown woman she.

Man of the world and profligate he, Hard and conscienceless, cynical, yet, Somehow, when he and the woman met, He learned what other there is in life Than pa.s.sion-feeding and careless strife.

There came resolve and a sense of shame, For she made as his motto but ”Faith and fame.”

The world is foolish: we cover truth; We're barred by the gates that we built in youth.

Two were they surely, and two might stay, But she turned him into the better way; His thoughts were purified even when He chafed and raged at the might-have-been; He learned that living is not a whim, For the soul in her entered into him.

He fights, as others, to win or fall, And the spell of the Woman is over all.

Bravely they battle in their degree, For--”The woman I love shall be proud of me!”

And the man and woman, the one in heart, May be buried together or hurled apart, But the strong will battle in his degree, For--”The woman I love shall be proud of me!”

There were men and women, and music and flowers, and some of the people had intelligence, and I drifted about at the Laffins' party, and rather enjoyed myself. Of course I wanted to see the woman a fancy for whom had gripped Harlson so hardly. I had forgotten about her until, with a pleasant and clever person upon my arm, I had found something to eat and had come upstairs again, and released her to another. I wandered into an adjacent room, and there ran upon Harlson among a group. I was presented to Miss Cornish.

I do not know how to describe a woman. This one, whom I have known better than any other woman in the world, is most difficult of all for me to picture. She stood there, not uninterested altogether, for, no doubt, Harlson had been telling her already of his closest friend, his lieutenant in many things, and I had an opportunity to study her with all closeness as we exchanged the commonplaces. I understood, when I saw her, how it was that he had referred to her so absurdly as a little brown streak of a thing. Little she was, a.s.suredly, and brown, and so slender, that his simile was not bad, but the brownness and the slenderness were by no means all there was noticeable of her. She was not imposing, this woman, but she was not commonplace. Supple of figure she was, and there were the big eyes this stricken friend of mine had told me of, and rather p.r.o.nounced eyebrows, and her lips were full and red, and there was that fullness of the chin, or, rather, the vague dream or hint or vision of a daintily double chin at fifty, which means so much, but the forehead was what a woman's should be, and the glance of the eyes was clean and pure, though, in a clever woman's way, observant and comprehensive. It was a cultivated and fascinating woman whom I met.

We talked together, and Grant Harlson looked on gratified, and she seemed to like me. She made me feel, in her own way, that she liked me because she knew of me, and as we were talking I felt that she was paying, unconsciously, the greatest compliment she could to the man beside us. I knew it was because of the other, and of something that he had said of me, that she was so readily on terms of comrades.h.i.+p.

And I knew, in the same connection, and from the same reasoning, that she had already begun to care as much for him as he for her--the man who, the night before, had so comported himself with me. Of course, it appears absurd that I could reach such a conclusion upon so little basis, but to tell when people are interested in each other is not difficult sometimes, even for so dull a man as I.

”You have known Mr. Harlson many years, I believe,” she said, and added smilingly: ”What kind of a man is he?”

”A very bad man,” I replied, gravely.

She turned to him in a charming, judicial way:

”If your friends so describe you, Mr. Harlson, what must your enemies say? And what have you to say in your own defense? What you yourself have owned to me in the past is recognition of the soundness of the authority.”